HA NOI — The country's first ever photo exhibition of insects is on display in Ha Noi offering a closer look at Viet Nam's anthropological population.
Co-organised by the Viet Nam Nature Museum and the Italian Embassy, the exhibition has gathered over 200 photos of insects from across the country taken by researcher Vu Van Lien and Italian photographer Saolo Bambi.
Each panel features a characteristic of the insect life in an artistic style although they were initially taken purely for scientific research purposes.
There are also nine photos of typical forests throughout Viet Nam, located at various different altitudes from the southern island of Phu Quoc to Fansipan, the peak of Indochina, in the northernwestern province of Lao Cai.
The exhibition aims to celebrate 2010 as the first year of international biological diversity initiated by the United Nations.
"The exhibition also has a further purpose of promoting the protection of biological diversity as well as our living environment for now and for future generations," said Professor Chau Van Minh, chairman of the Viet Nam Science and Technology Institute.
The exhibition will be on display at Exhibition House, 45 Trang Tien Street, until tomorrow.
Concert features Tchaikovsky works
HCM CITY — The HCM City Ballet Symphony Orchestra and Opera (HBSO) will present an evening of Tchaikovsky's music this weekend.
Beginning with Slanovic March in B-flat minor, Op.31, a popular work which highlights the spirit of Russian people, the concert will continue with Symphony No 5 in E Minor, op.64, which was written in 1988.
The work includes four chapters that comprise Russian folk and European music. It has been performed many times by prestigious orchestras worldwide.
The evening will finish with ballet performances by HBSO's young dancers, including Phuc Hung, Hong Chau, Phi Diep and Diem Trang – four talents who have helped infuse new ideas into traditional Vietnamese dance.
They will perform five extracts from popular Russian and French dances like Diana&Acteon, Chopiniana, The Flowers and Le Corsaire.
The concert, conducted by Tran Vuong Thach, will begin at 8pm tomorrow at the HCM City Opera House, 7 Lam Son Square, District 1.
Tickets priced from VND20,000 (for students) to 200,000 (US$10) can be bought at the theatre.
Sculptures celebrate origins of life
HCM CITY — Nineteen sculptures symbolising rice, seeds, and embryos, which their creator Bui Hai Son considers the original source of humans, are on display at an exhibition in HCM City.
Originarium (in Latin characters), or "The Origin," on at the HCM City Fine Arts University's Applied Arts Gallery, displays sculptures in bronze, wood, glass, and some other materials.
Son's works are displayed in two separate sections – one features just sculptures and in the other several works have been put together to create installation works.
For instance, Nguon (The Origin) and Lua (Rice) are among the highlights in the first section while they have also been put together along with more works to form Phuong Nam (The South).
"I spent at least a year working on my pieces, which depict Vietnamese culture and lifestyle," Son said. Nguon, representing a grain of rice and made from wood and bronze, is three metres long.
His colleagues and he faced challenges in exhibiting their works because of the giant size of most of them, he said. "I wanted a big open space to display my works and finally settled for the Applied Arts Gallery."
Son, born in An Giang Province in 1957, graduated from the Fine Arts University in 1987. He has displayed his works in many group exhibitions and fine-arts festivals at home and abroad. Last year he was invited to the Miyazaki International Exhibition of Contemporary Sculpture in Japan.
Originarium will be on show at 52 Phan Dang Luu Street, Binh Thanh District, until Monday. — vns